Tomorrow in Los Angeles, the ACLU is cosponsoring a conference that will gather public health and treatment professionals, academics, policy-makers and advocates to discuss a public health and safety approach to drug policy.

In another case in South Carolina, the ACLU represented the students of Stratford High School, where, in November 2003, a SWAT-team style raid recorded by school surveillance cameras, where police held guns to the heads of schoolchildren as they were handcuffed and held down on the ground while and their book bags were sniffed by dogs. At the end of the raid, no drugs were found, and no charges were filed. The ACLU sued the school and police officials for violating students' rights to be free from unlawful search and seizure, and use of excessive force. That case ended with a $1.6 million settlement for the students affected by the raid, and a new requirement that police must have either probable cause and pressing circumstances or voluntary consent in order to conduct law enforcement activity on school grounds.

In 2002, police conducted a suspicionless drug sweep of all K-12 classrooms at an elementary school in Wagner, South Dakota. As a German shepherd sniffed the classroom, in some classrooms, a school official told students that any sudden movement could cause the dog to attack. In one instance, the dog escaped its leash and terrorized kindergarteners by chasing them around the classroom. The case settled with a new prohibition against the use of drug dogs in the district’s schools when children are present.

These cases illustrate that school children may be harmed more by these types of excessive zero-tolerance and paramilitary drug prevention policies than by drugs themselves.